Britain is to launch one of the most widespread population studies seen anywhere in an attempt to improve the country’s health and prevent disease.
Our Future Health is a collaboration between the NHS, the private sector and universities and will monitor the health of five million people as they age.
Initially, three million people will be invited to take part and to answer questions about height, weight and lifestyle, data that be combined with a blood sample to build a database of 5mln people by 2025.
John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford and chairman of the project, said ageing populations around the world were forcing a fundamental rethink about the way healthcare is delivered.
“One of the fundamental issues for healthcare systems is they were really all designed mostly 40 or 50 years ago, around the big hospitals and the ability to treat people when they became symptomatic in the last stages of their diseases,” he said.
Britain already has carried out one large-scale healthcare census.
Known as the UK Biobank study, it contains the genetic information of 500,000 people and has been widely utilised both in the UK and abroad.
Bell said the UK was the only country that had the capability to produce such large databases and shown this to good effect during the Covid pandemic.
"It’s really important to do it because it’s a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we think about healthcare. But it is ambitious and we’re going to have to work hard to get there.”
Industry participants welcomed the plan.
Marc Howells, CEO of diagnostics group Goodbody Health, said: “We fully support Sir John Bell in his vision to rethink our healthcare system, to focus on prevention care before symptoms appear, giving a real opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives and reduce the death rates from chronic diseases.
“The UK Biobank study is a fundamental piece of work. Genetics are now able to be used to predict people’s risk of having chronic illnesses and what impact medical drugs have on everyone.
“We are supporting developments that help increase people’s survival rate or helps to maintain their health”